Science. Freaking awesome science.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by _indigo1

I mean, Musk has been fairly open about the target squarely being Mars.

I'm guessing the next milestone would be mars round-trip, then landing on Mars with SpaceX craft; then starting to deliver equipment.

Well, for SpaceX, sure. But we've already done lots of stuff on Mars, getting equipment to Mars is no new achievement.

A human round trip would be huge of course. But there are so many hurdles to overcome before that's demonstrated viable.

[StN]

Catch me if you can!

Spolier : Nonminative determinalism?

T - 0:15 - Lift off from a lovely morning at Mahia.

T + 2:30 - MECO and staging.

T + 7:50 - Video catches up with telemetry from stage 2 and battery jettison is seen. Just after that, stage 1 starts to generate plasma around the engine end heat shield.

T + 8:15 - Plasma picks up a bit, and if you've ever watched a crew return in real-time, you know that the plamsa burst makes radio comms difficult - so they switch to the chopper cam as it cruises around off Banks Peninsula for the catch while telemetry is tricky...


Maybe next time. All data is valid data!

Also, Sweden is probably stoked their satellite is now in sun synchronous orbit, so mission win!

[StN]

Wow - about 30 minutes ago I was out on the patio staining the furniture for BBQ season, and heard a massively noisy chopper - yep, a very forlorn Sikorsky S-92 was taking the low level GA route home up the coast to avoid the standard controlled airspace approach.

Not quite as cool as those people standing on the Florida beach getting the double sonic booms earlier in the week, but I'll take it.

[_indigo1]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

getting equipment to Mars is no new achievement

I meant fixed infrastructure. I.e. the first step to manned visitation would be delivery of fixed support infrastructure.
I.e. A base on Mars. Not probes.

And I don't think just a human round trip to Mars would be a milestone.
I meant just an unmanned round-trip to prove the craft can do it - that still has not been done yet - certainly not with a reusable setup.

Feed into that landing then taking off again as another milestone.
Again never been done AFAIK.

[MadMax]

Artemis success thus far

Fuck yeah, we're going to Mars

[Ab]

My heart was in my mouth until the main booster separation. I was just waiting for Challengeration.

[MadMax]

I felt like a rugby addict about to have a heart attack during a close match

[wazza]

i watched it live, was quite a special moment

[Know me.]

I'd love to have been there to watch it launch. Looked spectacular on the live feeds.

[Lightspeed]

https://www.space.com/james-webb-spa...smic-hourglass

[StN]

Is there someone somewhere missing out on an awesome credit, or is the colourisation all done by AI now?

[Lightspeed]

There are some image credits in the article, but I don't know what they represent:

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI))

[Cyberbob]

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, Space Telescope Science Institute.

[Lightspeed]

Yeah, none of that tells us who might have actually cooked up the final image.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by StN

Is there someone somewhere missing out on an awesome credit, or is the colourisation all done by AI now?

The past 6 months have just been mental in the AI imagery space. It's tripping me out. For decades we were all "computers will be good at stuff like collision avoidance and vector calculations and shape recognition, so we'll have self-driving cars Real Soon Now, but actual creativity will never happen", and we were completely 100% wrong. AIs can't reliably avoid running over pedestrians but there is actual computer-generated ART now.

[Trigga*happY]

Originally Posted by Ab

The past 6 months have just been mental in the AI imagery space. It's tripping me out. For decades we were all "computers will be good at stuff like collision avoidance and vector calculations and shape recognition, so we'll have self-driving cars Real Soon Now, but actual creativity will never happen", and we were completely 100% wrong. AIs can't reliably avoid running over pedestrians but there is actual computer-generated ART now.

To be fair, that's not entirely true. AI is EXTREMELY reliable at avoiding running over pedestrians, but we aren't so quick to forgive AI hitting a person as we are towards a person.

[Lightspeed]

Tonga volcano sea floor map reveals 'mind-blowing' cavity left behind by eruption

[Lightspeed]

James Webbs tracking clouds on Titan:




https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/12/...ns-moon-titan/

[DrTiTus]

Elimination of CO2 is a suicide pact – Professor William Happer on climate change misconceptions

A 100% increase in CO2 reduces the thermal radiation to space by only 1%

If the flux changes by 1% (from doubling CO2), we will get 0.75C increase in temperature - "you can't even notice that". "For the alarmists, this is a tremendous disappointment"

[fixed_truth]

Wrong thread bro https://forums.nzgames.com/showthread.php?t=88042

[DrTiTus]

[Lightspeed]

Fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes

US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment.

[StN]

Waiting for RocketLab to be happy with upper atmosphere data - so the launch is on hold at T-12:00

The range does look interesting with all the red lights. Spooky!

At the 40 minute mark, you get the on-hold music...

Contrasting command centres - Kiwis are all in black, and sitting in Darkmode. US chaps have ties on...

[StN]

Originally Posted by StN

Waiting for RocketLab to be happy with upper atmosphere data - so the launch is on hold at T-12:00

The range does look interesting with all the red lights. Spooky!

At the 40 minute mark, you get the on-hold music...

Contrasting command centres - Kiwis are all in black, and sitting in Darkmode. US chaps have ties on...

TL : DW - scrubbed after 2 hours due to upper level winds.

[Ab]

NASA has declared Insight’s mission concluded.

Thank you for your service little bot.

[StN]

That tweet. The feels.

Oh shit *checks desk drawer* - my name is on that one!

[Cyberbob]

I feel like a salute is in order. RIP good buddy.

I missed putting my name on that one. Mine's on the Parker Solar Probe, and that's still a couple years away from finishing it's mission.

[MadMax]

Today, I learned that Carl Sagan was born in where we now call Ukraine.

[fixed_truth]

His Dad was. Carl was born in New York.

[MadMax]

^ thanks, bad skim reading.

[StN]

Originally Posted by StN

TL : DW - scrubbed after 2 hours due to upper level winds.

Having another crack now.

Hmmm - did this guy at T-24:02 say Starling or Starlink?

[Lightspeed]

This looks cool.

NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep Space Missions

It's no Epstein Drive, but still.

[Ab]

Good news everyone

https://www.businessinsider.com/russ...century-2023-2

[StN]

Originally Posted by Ab

Good news everyone

https://www.businessinsider.com/russ...century-2023-2

Yerp.

Pfft - tranquility base has no rover!

[StN]

Waiting patiently for Elon to light the candle on a static fire of 33(?) sea-level raptors, and destroy another concrete pad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BQKCnPkIc&t=0s

[StN]

^^^ SpaceX feed - Elon indicated 31 of the 33 fired - one shutdown before, and one during.

[Lightspeed]

Webb telescope spots super old, massive galaxies that shouldn’t exist

In a new study, an international team of astrophysicists has discovered several mysterious objects hiding in images from the James Webb Space Telescope: six potential galaxies that emerged so early in the universe’s history and are so massive they should not be possible under current cosmological theory.

Each of the candidate galaxies may have existed at the dawn of the universe roughly 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang, or more than 13 billion years ago. They’re also gigantic, containing almost as many stars as the modern-day Milky Way Galaxy.

[Lightspeed]

NASA Names Astronauts to Next Moon Mission, First Crew Under Artemis

[Lightspeed]

Hobbyist Finds Math’s Elusive ‘Einstein’ Tile

[StN]

T-9 hours for the biggest rocket launch attempt in history.